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January 31, 2013

(+++) POP GOES THE CULTURE

It goes without saying
that pop stars garner an inordinate amount of attention in the United States,
whether or not they actually contribute much of anything to public discourse or
matters of significant import. Actually, they get plenty of attention
worldwide, not necessarily because of the quality of anything they do but because
of their distraction quotient: many are popular precisely because they, like
sports teams, give people something on which to focus other than the rituals
and ruts of daily life. There is an old saying that academic politics is so
vicious precisely because it is so unimportant. Similarly, the constant focus
on the ins and outs of pop culture attracts so much attention because, really,
it does not mean anything. And this is true both for adults and for kids. Fans
of Black Sabbath are the intended audience for Tony Iommi’s chronological
memoir, Iron Man, which chronicles
the ups and downs of the group in totally expected and absolutely unexceptional
ways. Yes, there was drug abuse. Yes, there were marital and interpersonal traumas.
Yes, there was alcohol aplenty. Yes, there were accusations that group members
were Satanists (does that really surprise anybody?). Yes, there were issues of
loyalty to the band, management and scheduling problems, the exit of Ozzy
Osbourne. Yes, there were instances of the sort of bizarre behavior that keeps
people’s attention riveted on pop figures who seem to feel the need to live up
to the reputation they want to have: Osbourne catching a shark when fishing
from a hotel window and dismembering it in the room’s bathtub, Iommi himself repeatedly
setting fire to drummer Bill Ward’s beard.There is little real-world connection here: “We met with lawyers and
accountants. That got boring because we weren’t into that stuff at all.” Well,
duh. And “I could go on endlessly and just play on and on, until I didn’t know
what was good and what wasn’t anymore.” Well, duh, again. As for the history of
the time when Black Sabbath was big, there are comments such as this about
performing in Russia: “It was just at the time when they were pulling down all
the statues of Lenin. The country hadn’t opened up yet; there wasn’t a
McDonald’s or anything at that point.” The whole book is written at this level
of superficiality, providing minimal insight into history, the band, or, lest
we forget, music. It is a for-fans-only production laced with nostalgia for
heavy metal and those who produced it. Nothing wrong with that at all; nothing
particularly important about it, either.

Nor is history likely
to care much about One Direction and the other 21st-century boy-band
groups of its ilk. But so what? The groups’ young fans care now, and now is all that matters in a
“100% official” book such as A Year with
One Direction.The members of the
fresh-faced, well-scrubbed fivesome (whose cover pictures make a very
interesting contrast with Iommi’s) are seen and heard here in “exclusive new
photos and interviews,” posing charmingly in group as well as individual
pictures, with text such as: “You know One Direction love their fans
because…they worry about their fans getting soaked in the rain when waiting for
them…they would totally date a fan.”There is a quiz here: “What kind of Directioner are you?”There is a “Style File,” with the note, “No
one does style like One Direction.”There
are profundities such as this from Niall, who is asked if fame is as he
imagined it would be: “Yes and no. It’s much harder work than it’s made out to
be.” (Iommi says something similar in his book: “Being in a band isn’t all fun,
it’s bloody hard.”) And there is this revelation from Zayn: “I’m double-jointed
in my thumb.”And a big surprise from
Louis: “Our diets are not great – we often go for the fast food option.”Actually, though, the words are likely to be
mostly irrelevant to the target audience for this book, since the fans will
probably prefer to ogle the photos and ooh and aah over the poses than to read
that “the boys are pretty much with each other 24/7, so it’s no wonder they’ve
become such great friends.”The gulf
between One Direction and Black Sabbath is so deep as to be an abyss, but these
respective books’ focus on personality and anecdote rather than, say, music,
stands as a clear indicator of the importance of pop stardom in modern life,
whether in the 1970s or today: what matters is giving people the chance to
escape, however briefly, from dealing with anything in life that might be
considered remotely meaningful.